Long time coming but I finally found a problem that started plaguing EVERY thing, not just this game, but since at the time this was the only game I was playing and I was on it any time I wasn't at work or asleep...
Win 22H2 affected the CPU chip series of 13900k and kf's and caused random/increasing problems in a large percentage of the folks owning those chips. An arcane thing, to be sure, but just last night googled the right keywords and found it.
Yes I've been chasing my tail on this since the original entry, got a couple hundred hours of troubleshooting, changing memory chips (it really does present as a memory problem) and detailing every mem freq combo possible resulting in about three pages of closely written notes etc., etc..
Elusive and arbitrary, not sure why it hasn't gotten bigger press, but guess there's not enough of this chip owner population out there for it to have gotten widespread attention, since it's only the k and kf series that it messed with.
To make it worse, all the troubleshooting tools always said everything, including windows, was just fine, or they threw an error/CTD/BSOD with no log to show why, which didn't help with progress...
Plus most of the tools don't create the condition that would throw it, only games, lol.
Anyway, passing on for clarity's sake. My fix was setting all cores to 54 via Intel XTU. So simple after months of bruised forehead...
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments ... ith_intel/